Prince Was The True Villain Of ‘Purple Rain’

Despite being presented as the guy viewers should root for, Prince isn’t the hero of Purple Rain. He’s actually much more of a villain.

Aside from the extended concert scenes, the main narrative that repeats itself throughout the movie is that Prince’s the Kid is an emotionally manipulative, abusive, egocentric, and insecure man. His antisocial tendencies surface throughout the film both as he relates to his bandmates and how he treats his romantic interest, Apollonia.

Let’s first discuss his relationship with Apollonia. When the Kid first meets Apollonia, he walks behind her, puts on superfly bug-eyed shades, gets uncomfortably close, and just stares at her. She doesn’t seem terribly bothered since Prince is so damn sexy.This is intrinsically creepier, however, than sexting over Tinder or whatever other creepy things men do nowadays to seduce women.

To reduce the awkwardness, Apollonia tells him, “I really liked your song, too.” But when she turns around, he’s gone. Because the Kid thinks it’s super hot to be mysterious like Batman so that a woman can’t regularly expect much from him or hold him accountable for anything. The Kid is sending an early sign to Apollonia that she shouldn’t expect him to be consistently available.

Ten minutes further in the film, and the Kid begins his tactic of negging Apollonia, which can have the effect of bringing down a person’s self-esteem and making them emotionally vulnerable. When she says she’d like to “make it” as a singer, he demeans her with his scoffing tone and replies, “That’s what turns you on?”

The Kid acts as if her ambition is something she should be ashamed of. He also utilizes a sexual phrase, turned-on, because he uses sexuality to make his girlfriend feel unworthy. He does this again when Apollonia tells him they can’t go to her place (because her “place” is actually a dumpy hotel). His immediate response is to interrogate Apollonia if she’s having another man over. She replies, “Why do you always think there’s somebody else?”

Because the Kid is so cold-hearted, it’s believable to viewers that he’ll leave Apollonia stranded by a lake after she attempts to purify herselfin the waters of Lake Minnetonka. When Apollonia gets out of the water cold, naked, and soaked, the Kid leaves her behind and takes off on his motorcycle. He eventually comes back to pick her up, but for a minute the audience is led to believe that the Kid is just going to leave her stranded there. Which isn’t a believable behavior for a hero. Of course, the Kid was just reminding Apollonia once again that he controls the relationship. He’s like the dom in an S&M relationship devoid of actual consensual kinkiness.

For whatever reason — maybe it’s Prince’s incredible sex appeal, maybe it’s because of past abuse during Apollonia’s psychosexual development, maybe it’s because Apollonia is lonely in a city she’s new in — Apollonia keeps coming back. Even though she’s so poor that she’s running away from cab drivers she rips off and is staying in decrepit hotel rooms, she scrounges up enough money to buy the Kid a guitar he wanted. So how does he repay this loving gesture?

Within a minute of receiving this gift, the Kid HITS HER IN THE FACE.

He hits Apollonia because she said she was going to join Morris Day’s group, who is the Kid’s musical rival. She says he should trust her, which seems pretty sensible. But instead of expressing trust, right after the Kid smacks Apollonia he turns the situation back onto her by asking, “Apollonia, don’t I make you happy? … Don’t you like the way we are?” Apollonia shakes her head, which probably has something to do with her just having gotten slapped around.

This event inspires the Kid to write “When Doves Cry.” A great song on its own (with an incredible music video you should check out), the movie gives the tune a much different connotation. It’s partially about how the Kid’s abusive relationship with Apollonia mimics the way his dad beats his mother.

What’s messed up is that in the song the Kid sings a line referring to Apollonia, “Maybe you’re just like mother. She’s never satisfied (She’s never satisfied).” Maybe neither of these women are satisfied BECAUSE THEIR MEN FUCKING BEAT THEM.

The Kid roughs up Apollonia once again after she doesn’t obey his command forbidding her to drink liquor. Although he relents from hitting her in the face this time, he seems to be the opposite of remorseful about tossing his woman to the ground and abandoning her in a bad part of town near the train tracks in what appears an industrial wasteland, without any transportation, roughly 25 years before Uber was invented.

He’s such an ass to Apollonia that the Kid makes Morris Day seem pleasant in comparison. And Morris Day is a womanizer who makes very awkward come-ons, like when he tells Apollonia about his “brass waterbed” and says to her, “Your lips would make a lollipop too happy.” He also orders his Garfunkel-like counterpart to toss a woman in a dumpster.

It isn’t just Apollonia who constantly puts up with the Kid’s mistreatment — it’s very clear his bandmates don’t enjoy his attitude either, pestering him throughout the movie about playing the songs they wrote as oppose to only playing ones he penned. Instead of having productive conversations about this, the Kid flat out refuses their requests even though he hasn’t actually listened to their song. He wants his bandmates to know who’s in charge. It’s a dick-waving power grab.

His bandmates never really appear genuinely happy. Instead of being fun, making music for them is a contentious job where they make background noise on eggshells. It also doesn’t help that the Kid shows up late to practices, ends sets whenever he feels like (even if they’ve only played one song), and has the nightclub managers on the band’s ass because they’re fed up with the Kid’s unreliability.

When the band’s other guitarist confronts the Kid about his obsession with control, he mocks her by talking to her in a ventriloquist voice as he plays with a finger-puppet inside a cup. She says to him, “You can really hurt people. Doesn’t that mean anything to you? Doesn’t that make you feel like shit?” The Kid gives no response, staring at the wall until his bandmates leave him. He then reverts back to the puppet and the ventriloquist voice and tells himself, “We don’t need those girls. All you need is me.”

The Kid finally plays his bandmates’ song, and what do you know! It’s the best song in the entire movie and gets a huge ovation from the crowd. The song is, of course, “Purple Rain.”

It takes about an hour and a half for the Kid to play “Purple Rain” because he wants everyone to know that he does what he wants — even though what he wants is inconvenient and stressful for everyone else. He also gets off on manipulating the band’s inner-dynamics and playing head games that bring out the anger of his musical colleagues.

Only someone insecure with himself would be so ego-driven. Only a selfish cold-hearted coward would abuse their lover and constantly try to make her feel devious and the cause of his problems. Only a villain would exhibit the Kid’s behavior in Purple Rain.

Ross Benes is working on a book about indirect relationships between sex and society. He has written for The Wall Street Journal, Esquire, Deadspin, and Slate.